If you want to help shape digital products in their early stages, joining an online focus group or answering survey questions is a great way to make extra money online. They don’t pay as much as some of the other options we’re highlighting in this list, but you can join groups on sites like Survey Junkie, User Interviews and InboxDollars that pay out through PayPal, check or even Amazon gift cards. You’ll be asked to provide a bit of information about your personal demographics (age, location, etc…), but after that you can get going making money online through completing surveys.
You might be desperate for work, but don’t necessarily jump at an opportunity that sounds too good to be true. In my article about common Craigslist scams, I wrote about fake employers who “hire” new employees, then “accidentally” send them too much pay. They’ll ask their victims to wire back the difference, but a few weeks later, when the bank discovers that the initial check is a fraud, the “employee” is on the hook for hundreds, sometimes even thousands of dollars. If a job offer sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

23. Affiliates – There are many affiliate networks, such as FlexOffers and CJ Affiliate that allow you to promote other people’s products and services. You simply put a link or a banner on your page and then you get a percentage if someone clicks through and buys the product/service. You’ll want to select products that are specifically within your blog’s category.This is an effective way to earn money once you have the traffic coming to your blog.

With drop shipping, you’re effectively partnering with a manufacturer or wholesaler to sell their products. This way, you don’t pay upfront costs to buy inventory, aren’t sitting on unsold items taking up expensive warehouse space, and don’t have to deal with shipping the products yourself. You simply create your site, fill it with drop shippable products, and drive in customers, with almost everything else done for you.
In my (unpopular) opinion, getting a raise is harder than getting a promotion. Think about it from your boss’s perspective, would you rather a) pay more money for the same service, or b) pay more money for additional responsibilities. Alas, if you feel you’re overdue a raise, check out Dr. Randall Hansen’s article on Getting the Raise You Deserve. There are some really useful strategies there.
Find a profitable niche: We’ve talked about this a lot. But, where are you most comfortable? What niche do your skills, values, and interests intersect? Do you have 10 years of experience as a technical writer? Do you have long-standing PR relationships that’ll be invaluable in helping startups launch a successful crowdfunding campaign? Determine what makes your value unique, and lean heavily on showcasing that strength to your potential clients.

Outside of starting your own business, investing in the stock market has been one of the most consistent ways to create wealth over the past 100 years. In fact, since its inception in 1957, the S&P 500 has consistently returned 8% per year on average. A far higher return than savings accounts, CDs, money markets, or any number of other vehicles for saving and investing your money.

Walk around your neighborhood or town and I’m sure you’ll see tons of great local businesses with terrible design. However, with increasingly easy-to-use tools like Adobe Illustrator, Venngage, Stencil, and Visme, just about anyone with a creative mindset and a good amount of motivation can start making money online by being a graphic designer for local companies.

When you sign up for Trim, they immediately begin analyzing your spending and look for ways to reduce it. They’ll call your internet service provider and negotiate you a better deal on the same service. Same for your cable package (or any other recurring service you have). They’ll also look for hidden or otherwise forgotten about subscriptions and cancel those if needed. Think of them as your bill guard dog. No one gets by without their permission.

How many email newsletters are you bombarded with every single day? There’s a reason for that. Email marketing to an actively interested group of email subscribers is one of the best ways to make money online. There have even been million-dollar businesses built from simple email newsletters like TheSkimm, or Mister Spoils. Each newsletter targets a specific type of user with interesting, daily content, while also partnering with relevant companies and affiliates to bring in extra money. If this seems daunting, it’s not. Email marketing tools like MailChimp, ConvertKit, HubSpot and AWeber make it easier than ever to get started with email marketing. Here's my comparison of ConvertKit vs AWeber vs Mailchimp to review a few of my top picks. And another great option to consider (with the largest free plan available) is SendPulse, with their ability to send up to 15,000 emails per month to 2,500 subscribers, and then affordable plans starting at under $10/month as you grow from there.
Dosh: An up-and-comer among cash back apps, Dosh is quickly earning a reputation for offering some of the strongest cash back offers in the space. Pay with your linked card at 1,000s of stores and restaurants, and get up to 10% cash back automatically in your Dosh Wallet (in addition to a $10 sign up bonus). Refer your friends to Dosh and get $5 for each one who signs up and links a verified card.
I have been really disappointed with the survey gig. They underestimate the time they take to complete by like a third and often I find myself spending 10 minutes in what seems like a survey only to find out it’s a pre-survey qualifier, where it feels like I’m giving them so much personal information that I ought to be paid, but at the end of it I’m told I don’t qualify but the award like the equivalent of a penny or two to thank you for your time.

One of the quickest and easiest ways to make money online is to do surveys. You can use sites and apps like Swagbucks, Survey Junkie, or Opinion Outpost to fill out questionnaires and get paid in cash or other rewards, like gift cards. However, it can take a while to find a survey that’s a good match for you, and you may need to make a certain amount before you can get your payout.

Instead, try scratching for free using an Android app called Lucktastic. (It’s called Lucktastic Match for iOS.) Each day, it releases a new assortment of digital scratch-off tickets. Lucktastic says instant wins range from $1 to $10,000. You can also earn tokens that you can exchange for free gift cards to retailers including Amazon, Walmart, Kohl’s, Sephora and more.
In 2014, Caitlin Pyle made over $43,000 by working as a freelance proofreader…in her spare time. When she wasn’t working, she even had time to go on several fun vacations. After she had a ton of success doing that, she decided she wanted to teach others how to do the same thing, so she started up Proofread Anywhere. Sign up for one of her free workshops to learn more about making money as a proofreader.
Mostly simply, “micro jobs are small, easy tasks that can be completed in a short amount of time, and generally earn you between $3 and $100. They’re often online jobs that you can do from home, but there are local opportunities, too. They don’t require an interview, meetings, or set hours, which makes them the perfect vehicle for making extra money on the side.”
Display. Just as in any retail operation, the way you display your wares will greatly impact your sales. Produce should be placed underneath a cover to protect it from the sun, but be sure to allow at least seven feet of head room. Display your prices prominently, and clearly identify the things that make your product special. Personalize your stand with signs to inform your customers.

Many people make good money on the side by performing in various ways. If you love to sing, you might sing at holiday services at churches, or at weddings. You might be a performer at children's birthday parties, dressing as a beloved character or doing magic. You might even get a gig singing at a restaurant, or you could try street performing, perhaps dazzling passers-by with some music or magic.

For sure! I think that’s something Jeff and I have learned rather quickly is to definitely not put all your eggs in one basket. We had 1-2 affiliates that we promoted for the longest time that were by and large our main sources of income. We realized that if we lost even 1 of those affiliates we would be in for a huge world of hurt when it came to our monthly intake.

Everyone says you're a fantastic writer, so isn't it about time you got paid? According to Durst, Good writing is in demand, especially for online content. Good freelance writing websites to find job listings include JournalismJobs.com, upwork.com, and MediaBistro.com. If you have experience as a copy editor, writer, or proofreader, go to editfast.com to find freelance opportunities in these areas. Rates average at $32, $28, and $26 an hour for remote writing, editing, and proofreading jobs, respectively.
The Ibotta app gives you cash back on the groceries you already buy. Some deals are brand specific, while others give you cash just for purchasing a certain type of item, like a loaf of bread from any brand. Choose your deals before you check out, then submit a picture of your receipt and get paid via Venmo, PayPal, or redeem for gift cards. Sign up with Ibotta and also claim a $10 welcome bonus.
Diligence. In this industry, the line between scams and honest businesses is blurry, so you need to do your homework before accepting a position. Call the Better Business Bureau in your area to find out if there have been any complaints filed against the company, and do an online search on their name. Alpine Access is a well-respected company in the field, and Call Center Careers is a great place to look for legitimate call centers looking to hire.
Clothing: thredUp makes it easy to sell clothes online. To sell your items, order a free “Clean Out Bag” on thredUP’s website. Then send in your shoes via FedEx or USPS. Once they arrive, thredUp will inspect your items before listing. Their site says they accept less than 40% of items in the average Clean Out Bag. Make sure your items are clean, name-brand, less than five years old, and in excellent condition to increase your chances. Depending on the popularity of the clothing items you send in, you will be paid either after processing, or once your items sell.

Do you love getting refunds? How cool would it be to get money back on stuff you’ve already bought? Paribus is a service that lets you find out if stores you’ve shopped at online owe you a refund. It’s free to sign up. Paribus connects to your email account and checks your receipts. If they find out a retailer has dropped their price they file a price adjustment claim for you. Try out Paribus.

If you've developed valuable skill sets or picked up certifications within your industry over the years, offering your consulting services to local business owners can be a lucrative way to make money online. Whether you're an expert marketer, business strategist, or manufacturing aficionado, there's likely a local business owner who's willing to pay you to help them solve an issue with their company. Start with my guide to launching a freelance (consulting) business and then use my breakdown of crafting an effective cold email to convince local small business owners to hire you.
Sign up for a reputable affiliate network: Aside from Amazon, there are dozens of top affiliate programs for bloggers and even large reputable affiliate networks, such as Share-A-Sale, Clickbank, and Skimlinks, that specialize in connecting you with merchants who are looking for affiliates to sell their products. They charge relatively low commission fees for the privilege of connecting you with merchants, and the merchants on these sites tend to offer much higher commission percentages or set dollar amount payouts.
Try flipping houses if you have experience with making home repairs. As you may know from watching popular home improvement shows, flipping homes involves buying up a lower valued property that needs work, and then fixing it up for resell. To get started, you’ll need to have financing either through a bank a partner. Then, you can buy a property that’s priced below market value. After you renovate the property, you may be able to sell it for a profit.[13]
Video is growing like crazy. And more and more people are looking for professional help cutting their raw footage into viral-worthy content. If you have the right software and a bit of skill, you can easily make money online as a video editor. Check out these article of Fstoppers on how to become an online video editor and then look for relevant jobs on Mandy.com, Creative Cow Job Search, or ProductionHub.
It’s industry standard to charge anywhere from $1,000-$2,000 per month per client, and you don’t need previous website or marketing experience to get started. As you bring on more clients and build a reputation in your community for delivering outstanding results, your income can scale up quickly. It only takes a handful of clients to start building a full-time income.

While it often takes a significant amount of time and hard work to build up your affiliate income, if you have the ability to regularly publish high quality content that drives in targeted traffic to your website, this online revenue source can become quite substantial. Follow along with my experiment growing a new blog, called SmartWP about WordPress, into an additional revenue stream for my business.

Those who enjoy writing may be able to make some money on the side doing freelance writing and perhaps even becoming a contract writer. How much you can earn will vary widely, as some kinds of jobs pay more and some kinds of writers (such as those with many bylines) can command more. Even if you earn just $50 per short piece you write for an online site, doing four of those per week would be $200 -- equivalent to $10,400 per year. You can look for gigs at sites such as Upwork.com, Fiverr.com, and Freelancer.com.
Now, if you don’t know people who might want your coaching services, there are a number of online tools and communities that make it incredibly easy to find clients and teach, on just about any topic area you can think of. Community driven platforms like Clarity.fm and Coach.me provide you with a network of potential clients to interact with, as well an integrated payment solution.

Then once you’ve got your domain name and hosting sorted out, it’s time to pick a CMS, or Content Management System, that will let you update pages, build your blog and integrate with all the other services you need. It’s hard to go wrong with WordPress—the CMS powering close to a quarter of the internet. Keep in mind that eventually as you start growing traffic to your blog, you'll be wise to invest in a managed WordPress hosting plan from a company with great service like Kinsta , where all of the settings are custom-tailored and optimized to work particularly well with WordPress-powered websites.

If this is the first time you are hearing about this, though, then we actually do not recommend trying it. The average skill level of players on the internet has improved so much over the past few years that it’s virtually guaranteed that a new player will lose money over the long run. But hey, Ben made upwards of 6 figures playing online in poker in college, so we had to list it. 🙂

That’s my plan. No kids, no spouse, parents deceased. I’ll never be able to retire. On PSLF, but forgiveness not approved until 120th payment. Many are not being forgiven now. I take courses to stay in deferment. FedLoan bases payment on gross; not net. How does that make any sense?! After bills I can’t afford the payment. I have 3 grad degrees. Was supposed to be a psychologist. APA & NCE won’t accept my 15yo degrees for the national exam. So I teach at a CC. Over 180,000 in debt now and it grows monthly.

Breaking In. Many people find that once they’ve completed their training, getting their first job can be difficult because many companies require a minimum of two years experience. Many newbies start out by volunteering to get some history under their belt. It’s not impossible to land a job fresh out of school, but you’ll need diligence and persistence, and probably a little luck.
Bulk Selling: For all practical purposes, you can sell as many items as you like on Decluttr. If you reach the 500-item-per-order limit, just start a new order. This is a big advantage for folks staring down huge boxes of old DVDs, CDs, and textbooks. And it’s a distinct competitive edge on retail trade-in platforms, which may require users to enter their items one at a time.
So many people dream of writing a book, but never go through with it. Yet no matter what, I’m sure you have experience and value you could give through writing a book. By packaging your skills and knowledge into a downloadable eBook that helps people learn a skill, advance their careers, or start a businesses, you can change someone’s life and even make good money online. You'll just need to employ an easy tool like Sellfy in order to quickly sell PDF files (like an eBook) to your readers.
Do you love getting refunds? How cool would it be to get money back on stuff you’ve already bought? Paribus is a service that lets you find out if stores you’ve shopped at online owe you a refund. It’s free to sign up. Paribus connects to your email account and checks your receipts. If they find out a retailer has dropped their price they file a price adjustment claim for you. Try out Paribus.
6. IZEA – IZEA works in addition to a blog or on its own. You get paid to blog, tweet, take photos and take videos. The pay is mostly based on your following, so if you want to make money with your tweets, you’ll need to grow you Twitter following. Likewise, if you want to make money with blogs, you’ll need substantial blog traffic (more on blogging below).
Mentorship. With sites like Etsy, it simply doesn’t make sense to reinvent the wheel when opening a shop. Instead, look to others who have been down the path and have learned the hard way what to do – and what not to do. Blogs like Handmadeology and EverythingEtsy.com offer hints and guidance for artists just looking to get started in this profitable home-based business.
You’d do most of your work in a home garden, but you’ll have to spend your weekends away from home. If you love the idea of selling your home-grown produce, but can’t swing being out of the house on weekends, consider selling to friends, family, and neighbors instead. Almost everyone prefers the taste of a fresh picked tomato to a store bought one.

Blogging is a great side hustle because you can do it at your own pace anywhere you want. It's not a quick and easy way to make money, but there are a lot of ways to make money side hustling while blogging. You can sell advertising, become an affiliate for other people's products, sell your own online product, and more. It does take time to build up an audience to be able to make a decent amount of money, but once you have a large following, you could earn over $15,000 per month or more (we do).

There’s plenty of work and clients to be found. If you know where to look. To start, you need to know if there is enough demand for your skill to make it worth the effort to go out looking for work. Start by searching for freelance postings on sites like Flexjobs, SolidGigs, Contena or one of the dozens of other skill-specific freelance job boards.
Companies like Uber and Lyft offer a great opportunity to make some quick cash. You'll need a clean driving record, a fairly new car and the authorization to work wherever it is that you live. If you have all of those things, you can work when it's feasible for you, whether that's in the middle of the day during rush hour, or in the wee hours of the night on a weekend. The choice is yours.